By Christopher Zoukis In a very unusual case, William Cordoba, 57, serving a life sentence at California’s San Quentin for second-degree murder and robbery convictions in 1981, has won more than $65,000 from a federal jury, which found he had been coerced into essentially becoming a female vocational instructor’s sex slave. In May 2010, Cordoba […]

AN ASTHMATIC SINCE AGE 10, WASHINGTON WAS ASSIGNED TO CELLMATES WHO WERE HEAVY SMOKERS. To settle long-running litigation, including a jury verdict of $111,000 against state corrections officials, Missouri has agreed to ban smoking in all 22 of its prison facilities by next April. In an order issued Sept. 21, a federal judge issued an […]

After Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas Aug. 25 and devastated Houston, it wreaked further havoc on the southeastern corner of Texas. Included in that damage was the city of Beaumont, home to about 120,000 residents, plus three federal prisons and three state ones. Although rising floodwaters disrupted the municipal water system citywide for around […]